MacCool's letter outlined Newham's plan to move housing benefit claimants to Stoke-on-Trent as it could no longer afford local accommodation, partly owing to "overheating of the private rented sector … with the onset of the Olympic Games".

The incendiary missive made the Olympics' effect on housing a feature of dinner party conversations across the capital, especially as it came weeks after London 2012 sponsor Lloyds Banking Group published research suggesting East End house prices have risen more than £800 a month since the Games bid was won in 2005.

So does this make the East End – with plans for an extra 11,000 homes around the Olympic Park part of the Games' legacy – the capital's new property hotspot? Sadly for existing Newham property owners, almost certainly not. At least not for many years.

Landlords renting properties in Stratford (E15), next to the Olympic Park, may believe differently as rents increased by about 30% during 2010 and 2011, according to property website Rightmove.com. Housing charity Shelter has anecdotal evidence of landlords evicting tenants saying they can charge more during the Games.

But rent has been raised by as much in other areas of Newham, such as Manor Park (E12) and Forest Gate (E7), while tenants in the borough as a whole are paying 25% more.

That may sound a lot – but in Newham rents have been growing more slowly than the Greater London average. Many property experts argue that the rent increases are more likely to be a symptom of the recession and a flight towards cheaper housing, than simply an Olympic effect.

When it comes to buying a house, there is very little data to suggest the Olympics has had a positive effect on prices, despite the Lloyds press release. Yolande Barnes, director of residential research at estate agents Savills, says: "In terms of capital values I can't see any evidence of a pre- or post-Olympic price boom."

Analysis of the Lloyds data shows the headline figure is strongly skewed by rises in postcodes to the west of the Olympic stadium. Historically, the Lea Valley has been a boundary between the affluent west and much poorer east. That effect is starkly illustrated by recent analysis from property research firm, Hometrack.

The company's data (above) shows that in 2001 the average value of property in Stratford stood at a 30-35% discount to Greater London. The gap narrowed to 22% when London secured the Games but has widened again to 35%.

The new properties planned for the site may change that (although they will have a separate post code), but many experts expect these new areas to become islands of higher quality and value neighbourhoods. The house price gap is not expected to suddenly alter drastically.

Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said: "You could effectively have a two-tiered housing market [around Stratford]. In five to six years I'd expect a lot more orange and red around the Olympics site [as new properties in the park are constructed].

"All the green in E15 is secondhand housing stock and I'd expect the green areas around Stratford to rise in the medium term, more off the back of greater availability of mortgages and an improving economy than on the Olympics in the short term. There will be a small catch-up, but the quality of the housing stock is different between the 150-year-old existing properties and the new build."

The speed with which developments affect surroundings also vary widely, and they can clearly be affected by the overall economic environment.

On the Greenwich peninsula, near the O2, a redevelopment project to construct 10,000 homes is considered a textbook case of how these schemes can stall.

The latest announcement on the project outlines how Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration Ltd (GPRL), a joint venture that includes listed property groups Lend Lease and Quintain, should start building 1,350 homes by 2015. However, Greenwich council originally granted outline planning permission for the project in 2002.

After the latest plan to build housing on the site was announced in January, a frustrated Borough of Greenwich said: "The opportunity to develop new homes existed years before anyone had heard of the credit crunch and yet all they have done is sit on the land. Even today, no detailed planning applications for sites they claim to be developing have been submitted to the council.

"Greenwich council would very much prefer the GPRL consortium to leave the peninsula and hand the land back to partners willing to match our ambition for development."

Developing the Olympic site

There are five development areas or neighbourhoods in the park being managed by the London Legacy Development Corporation. Plans exist to build 6,800 homes.

The first neighbourhood, Chobham Manor with 960 family homes, will be built to the north of the site where the temporary basketball arena is located . The other four to be constructed over 20 years,are: East Wick in the north-west of the park with 887 homes; Sweetwater, west, with 651 homes; Marshgate Wharf, south-east,2,665 homes; and Pudding Mill Lane, south-west, 1,709 homes.

The corporation has shortlisted three bids to develop Chobham Manor: East Thames and Countryside Properties; Barratt Homes and Le Frak Organisation; and Taylor Wimpey and London & Quadrant.

In the Athletes' Village, 2,818 flats have been built. They will become homes after the Games .Of these, 1,379 will be owned and managed as affordable housing by Triathlon Homes, a joint venture of the housing associations East Thames Group and Southern Housing Group and the developer First Base.

The remaining 1,439 properties will become private housing after being acquired by a consortium of UK developer Delancey and Qatari Diar, an arm of the Arab state's sovereign wealth fund. The consortium has also secured six adjacent future development plots with potential for 2,000 homes.